HomeTech.fm - Episode 323 - SnApple Events

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 16th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Good, Jason. Happy Prime Day to you and yours. Yeah. You know, I was thinking this week and I was like, I wonder if we could, is it even possible to do a show in the smart home without talking about Prime Day?

Well, have you purchased any Prime Day deals as they are calling them? Well, this is part of what I was thinking about, Seth, because I had zero intention of participating in Prime Day this year. I just wasn't really on my radar. And there's nothing that I really need that's all that pressing. But lo and behold, I get a text from my wife, of all people, who's like, she's not like anti-smart home, but she's pretty ambivalent about it generally.

And she's like, my friends have been telling me about these things and they're awesome. And there's a great deal. And it was the, it was the Echo Show 8. Okay. The little eight inch touchscreen. So, you know, I've been talking about one of these smart displays forever and, you know, I'm also incredibly slow to move on things, but this was such a good deal. I was trying to look and see right now what I paid for them, but I don't quite remember. Anyways, Echo Show 8, picked up a few of them,

picked up one for us, and then I don't think my family listens to the show, so I'm safe saying this, but we've got a couple banked for the holidays. Nice, nice. What about you? No, I haven't. I'm actually going through it right now because they have finally, they put this little, well,

first I saw at the very top right now for the next six hours and 51 minutes. So if you're listening to the show, I'm sorry, you won't be able to score big on this. Sony 65 inch Ravia OLED, instead of $2598, it's selling on there for $1500 so oh whopping 42% off wow not bad but they they have some deals recommended for you which I I thought were kind of funny because it's nothing I'm actually interested in so I'm gonna I'm gonna go dig through this later I haven't even looked open the app to look at it, it looks like we got these Echo Show 8s for $65 a pop. They were $130 at full price. $64?

Oh, wow. So $64.99. Well, there's deals to be had. Most of it is a ripoff. But if you keep an eye on sites like like the wire cutter verge will probably have you know they'll try and pick out the deals but most of it's just like they raise the price and then lower it um but in your case it's an amazon product they can drop the price as much as they want um so yeah 65 isn't a bad deal that's that a good impulse buy. Yeah. I figure for one of those, just to have it around the kitchen, I've been wanting to play

around with these smart displays for a while to see if I actually get use out of it on an ongoing basis. I just wonder if it's one of those things that I'll be really into for the first couple of weeks. And then it'll kind of, when the novelty wears off, if it'll just become like, like our echo in the kitchen, I mean, we, we use it, but 90% of what we use it for or more is like setting a timer or listening to music. You know, we don't get a ton of, uh, a ton of use out of it, um, outside of that. So yeah, I'll, I'll be curious how the smart display fits into our, to our day-to-day life, as it were. Yeah. We'll have to keep us updated on that.

But this week, we had a pretty big week in events. Not only did we hit Prime Day, we had an Apple event, and we had a Snap Pro Live event keynote and Snap Pro Live general sessions and everything that they were having. So what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines and talk about these? Let's do it. So we want to start out, Seth, with the Apple event. And I'm going to just pause and tip my hat to you. You got the HomePod mini.

For those who are listening to the show, I don't remember if it was last. It must have been last week. I was still saying no, which was probably foolish bet at the time. I think there was a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that a HomePod mini was coming, but it had been so overdue that, Seth, I'd given up hope.

This would have been one to have agreed that there had been a HomePod mini and then done the over-under on the time for how long they spent talking about this thing. They spent probably a quarter of the event on the time for that like how long they spent talking about this thing they spent a like probably a quarter of the event talking about you know it was an hour long so probably about 20 minutes talking about uh the smart home and home pod mini um you know the smart home in general and launching around the home pod mini and different features that they were launching

with the home pod mini that were some were pre-announced, some were not. So, um, pretty cool. The rest of the event was all like the iPhone 12 updates, you know, new phones, which is their flagship product. It's, uh, it's where they make their money. Uh, but I was just kind of shocked to see like the real quick introduction of the HomePod mini. Um, and, uh, it looks slick. I have, did you. Did you get a chance to take a look at the event or look at the photos? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't get to watch the event live and I haven't gone back and watched the video, but I've read up on a bunch of the summary stories and seen a bunch of the industry dialogue going around and yeah, the HomePod mini, I mean, it looks slick, certainly a compelling price point relative to

its big brother, the full HomePod $299 versus $99 for it. Significantly smaller. I'm looking at a side-by-side picture right now on nine to five max. So definitely much more mini than the, like I said, it's big brother. But it looks compelling, I think, for Apple fans who kind of live and breathe in that ecosystem. I suspect they'll see pretty good traction with this at that $99 price point. Still crazy to think that it's, you know, triple the price of what you could go buy like a small Echo or Google speaker for. You just bought an Echo with a screen on it for $65. Right, right. So still definitely when you compare it, relatively speaking, it's still premium, a premium price. but I think that Apple's clientele has always

been willing to pay a premium for Apple products. So $299 was a big chasm to cross, but I think at that $99 price point, I suspect this will be pretty popular. I think it's going to be very popular, especially since it integrates. I mean, if you're already integrated with HomeKit in in your house uh this one's going to be pretty big there was a couple of like flagship features i don't think well it depends on how well they work but i don't think that uh i saw coming uh but we'll kind of get to those um first let's just kind of like describe this thing it looks like a little small orb i guess it's it's it does that that form factor is really becoming the thing similar to the new echo it's not a tube anymore it's like lady in a golf ball i don't know like it's it's it's a larger a softball i guess yeah um it's got it comes in black and white or i guess what do

they call that space gray white and space gray um has a full dynamic driver inside of it that kind of points down and then like these two passive radiators for bass on the side uh so they say it sounds pretty good i i do want to get my hands on one of these one of these days and and take a listen i suspect it'll sound marginally okay probably better than like uh google home mini it'll probably sound a lot better than that. Cause that's like just a tiny hockey puck looking thing. Right. So these are supposed to, they were bragging about how these have like the 360 degree audio and has the,

like an S five chip in it, which they said enables that same computational audio that the bigger home pod has. So that will be interesting to see how, like if you put it in the room and start playing sound, that the bigger HomePod has. So that will be interesting to see how, like if you put it in the room and start playing sound, it will start listening to the reflections that are coming back off the wall for that sound and adjusting the dynamic range of the song that's playing.

It makes sure, it's actually kind of a cool feature. When you're playing audio on a HomePod and you just crank it, just crank it all the way up, you know, usually on a smaller system, you start hearing a woofer give out or you'll start hearing the the high-end distorting you don't hear distortion on these things they just kind of they get up to their max you'll hear the the woofer kind of drop down a little bit like the bass will drop out but not like go away it's still there but they balance everything so you don't have that weird audio sound so it's right it's a neat system that balance everything so you don't have that weird audio

sound so it's right it's a neat system that is interesting uh and it you know of course plays it's like just like sonos everything else it it sinks across the rest of the house they've got a new handoff feature coming later this year with the new u1 chips which are in i think they're in the current phone lineup so like the iphone 11s had it. But the iPhone 12s will have it. This is kind of like a proximity-based chip thing that they've been rolling out slowly and silently. This is kind of big. New content provider. So podcast app will be on there. iHeartRadio.com, TuneIn, Pandora, and Amazon are coming. So all of those. That is big. Instead of playing, just all it does right now is Apple Music. So this is huge.

Kind of one of the big dings against it. I still don't see Spotify there, which is kind of frustrating. Yeah. But I know they're kind of in legal action or something with Spotify right now. So I don't see that. Yeah. Rashid's pointing out no title either. Title would be awesome to have on there.

There's a new HD service, HD audio service i've been hearing about it's kind of a short shorter name i'll have to remember what it is starts with like a d or b or something um but people have been talking about that and how it sounds so much better than title so um i'll try and remember what that is a deezer no it's not deezer it's yeah there it is quobas okay i was way off with the q but uh quobas uh that one i've been hearing a lot of buzz about and how good it sounds interesting that those are the type i would love to see title deezer quobas like all put on a homePod because it sounds decent. It's a decent sounding speaker. Maybe not a decent sounding $300 speaker, but it would sound a lot better if I could play something other than Apple

Music on it. Right. Right. But I think the biggest feature I saw announced on this thing was this intercom feature. So this is cool, Jason. You can make intercom announcements basically off your phone or through using the Siri on the HomePod. And it'll announce to other HomePods in the house.

Your voice will come over those and say, hey, I've got pizza. It's time for dinner. That kind of thing. But it also gets pushed out to other devices. So you can say you know hey uh whatever i can't i can't do it right now because it's right there i'm staring at it hoping it doesn't i don't trigger it um but you can say hey uh you uh let's uh let's uh start let's uh start a movie in five minutes or something like that and it tell everybody we'll start a movie in five

minutes and it'll go out go out and push that notification out to all the home pods but if you have like an apple watch it'll ding somebody on that too and play oh cool they can play it on their apple watch if you're in the car you can you know push the button on the car and through car play you can say hey i'm headed home and it gets pushed into the all the ecosystem the whole ecosystem that's using intercom so i think it's a really cool feature that they've added in there's no one else i mean amazon has an intercom built into the alexa stuff but they don't have uh i don't think they have anything that you can get into the car they do have a car amazon thing but i don't think they have anything like this right and i have a watch yeah i was um just thinking about uh control four has like

their intercom anywhere which we'll probably talk a little bit about that when we get to the snap av event but but i i liked when i first heard about intercom anywhere one of the features i thought was cool about it is that number one in my mind i was like man we had an intercom in my home when we were growing up and it's like you know just you walked up and you push the button on the wall and you could announce into the rooms and like, it got used sometimes, but, but it didn't, didn't get used a ton. And so when I saw that, that intercom in the home was now becoming a thing with control four and Amazon and others doing it, I was, I'll be honest at first, I at first I was kind of like, okay, whatever,

probably not all that useful. But I actually really like the, it's sort of expanding out now where you think about intercom used to be limited to the home. It used to be limited to your physical home. And now you have basically the ability to intercom somebody anywhere. And I think it's particularly useful for parents and children to communicate. So, you know, I like word and, and do your announcement and have it go out to, to your kids to get them to put the iPad away and come down for dinner or whatever is, is cool and useful. But I think what makes this really neat is when you start to get outside of the home and you can almost have that intercom functionality in, in different ways.

There are just different use cases that that opens up that I think are interesting. Yeah, that's a good point. The intercom anywhere is more like a phone call. You can call somebody's phone, I guess, from a touchscreen, which is awesome. That's a really cool,

actually really good use case for getting intercom outside of the home. And this, I think, is even better. You don't have to walk up to a touchscreen. intercom outside of the home. And this I think is even better. You don't have to walk up to a touchscreen. You just yell in the air, hey, it's time for dinner. Tell everybody it's time for dinner. And everybody gets that message. So I got a question for you, Seth. I didn't watch the event. I didn't see this in the particular stories that I read. I know that one of the stories that I read did point out that the HomePod mini can be used as the default speaker for an Apple TV.

Do you know, is there any way to pair multiple of them if you wanted a stereo pair, for example? Yeah, they mentioned you can do that. The answer is yes. But they also said, um, that it does this intelligently now, which is a different process. Like right now you have to pair them in the home app together,

but this, what they said in the video was different. It says, if you put two of them in the room and you're playing music, they will automatically figure out they're in the same room and become a stereo pair. Interesting. So that's kind of cool. I mean stereo pair interesting so that's kind of cool

i mean to me that's kind of cool yeah no it is that is cool 99 price point like we said and there is one more thing and i don't know if this is like new because i'm the only one that uses this thing i haven't really tested it but like uh they said this will have multiple voice support basically they can if you walk in, if you and I had, uh, lived in the same house here and you walked in the room and said, you know, give me my schedule,

it'll give you your schedule. But if I walked in, it would give me mine. So, um, that's, that's kind of cool. Like it,

it can make sense. It can dig into the, your apps and your mail and your calendar and reminders and, and find out, you know, reply with personal personalized messages based on who is asking the question, which is really cool. Right. Available for order on November 6th availability, uh, beginning the week of November 16th. So coming right up about

a month from when we're sitting here recording Seth, I know we don't talk a lot about iPhones, but what was your take on the iPhone 12 lineup, I should say? Is there multiple? Yeah, the iPhone 12 looks pretty amazing for just the flagship phone that they have. And then they have the, I guess that's the flagship, the flagship's the Pro model. But I mean, for their general,

like just having a generalized phone, it, it looked amazing. It's got a ton of really good features. They've got three different sizes now, which is wild. They've got the little, little mini one, uh, which is a tiny little phone and they've got a big, big, large one, which is their, I think their largest phone now they have um i don't i don't really i'm gonna stick with the same ish size because it's gone up a little bit but i'm gonna stick with the same size i have now which is the 12 pro i'm not gonna go to the big one but i just i kind of want the mini one like the little one because i don't like the big phones. And this is almost too big, but I've gotten used to enough using it. Yeah, I've currently got an iPhone X

and I've looked at the size specs, but I haven't compared it. Do you know like the iPhone 12 mini versus the iPhone 12, which one is more comparable to the iPhone X? My wife has an iPhone X, so I should be able to answer that question i would say the the iphone 12 is probably about the same size yeah maybe a

little bit bigger maybe a little bit bigger um and the same with the pro if you're that round the only difference is between the only real differences i suppose between the pros and the 12s or the cameras. They're making kind of a distinction on what they're, they're bringing the camera technology to the pro lines first. And it looks like in a couple of years, it makes its way down range. So I'm going to stick with that because I really like using the camera on this thing. It's really, really good. It's got really cool features on it. I will say if you're going from the 10 to the 12, it's a good upgrade. Cameras and everything, it'll be a really good upgrade.

So you're going to go for the 12? Get your hands on it? Yeah, I've already put in a – well, I guess the pre-ordering starts, but they let you start early on your pre-orders and get all your ducks in a row. Got it. So we were just kind of sitting on the couch last night, figuring out what we wanted to do. And we, we both put in a like pre pre-order, I guess. Yeah. The pro looks like a beast of a phone and the pro max. Yeah. I know that I've got a colleague that I work with. Who's, who's into photography a little bit as a, as a hobby. And he was mentioning some of the camera features on the Pro and particularly the Pro Raw, the photo format. I just about fell out

of my chair. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I've heard of Raw format, of course, but I didn't know a lot about it. And he was just kind of telling me that that's a really big deal for the people who are into photography to be able to shoot in that raw format. And I think it's really interesting to think about like at what point, like what is the opinion in the photography community. I'm sure most people still scoff at this notion, but at what point does an iPhone become really a legit, almost professional-level camera? I mean, the technology is just, it sounds intense. In some ways it is, in some ways it isn't. The thing that we don't have in the big cameras, like the big DSLR cameras or theslr cameras or the the half cameras

is the computational side of it like apple has really upped their game on um taking the little tiny lens and taking in a bunch of shots off this lens like within microseconds of each other and at different like apertures and and and and mashing them together and figure in doing like machine learning on them to figure out what textures are in there, if that's mountains back there, or if it's a fence and, and just like applying computational photography to them to where what comes in is just like this crazy amount of data goes through a computer real fast. And then it, it spits out just a gorgeous photo. You, you don't have that right now on the big cameras. Like you can take a raw photo and

then you can go into Lightroom and, and, or, or whatever and process it. But like, it's, it's not going to, unless you're, you're, it's not going to do nearly the same in an instant, like something like an iPhone would. Um, I will say like, if you're sitting at a restaurant or something and like a low light restaurant and you want to take a picture real quick, iPhone is by far and away the best option. You're just not going to get the same type of photo, the same quality of photo off of like a big DSLR, unless you have like a tripod and like have the, have a huge prime lens, like open aperture, like a huge lens that you can bring in all the light real quick. And it's just the iPhone for what they've done with it, man. It's, it's really an amazing piece of equipment. Um, all the phones are kind of like that,

but the iPhone is, seems to lead the way every year on photography stuff. So, um, I, I don't, I still take, I still take pictures on both. Like if I'm doing family traveling, but I think the best camera you have is kind of the old saying is the best camera that have is the one, the one you have in your pocket. Right. It's like the one you have on you is the best camera clearly. So if you have one, take a picture and, uh, yeah. And I'm sure, you know, anyone listening who's into photography is probably listing off dozens of reasons why the iPhone's not there yet. With the pro cameras, I'm sure you have a million different options with lenses and things that you can do. So certainly I am not prognosticating the end of professional cameras here, but it just astonishes me how good these devices are getting

as cameras. It feels weird to even call them phones anymore when you stop and think about it. There was a whole feature in there where they kind of went over all the photography that shot on iPhone type thing. And then they had even the video that they're doing on these things they're you're you're able to now now this is insane to to actually talk about on the video side uh these the new cameras all record in dolby vision so every frame has dolby vision encoded into it meaning like all the black levels and light levels and everything that Dolby Vision does is encoded in there. And you can edit Dolby Vision on the phone as well. Like in the past to edit 4K Dolby Vision, you'd have to have like this huge rig and they pointed it out. It's like, here's the, here's the editing studio that you need with the, you know, Final Cut Pro and all that stuff. And it's like, no, you can, you can do it on the phone now, like, and edit Dolby Vision videos because it takes it. That's really crazy to think about. And

they pointed out in the presentation too, that there have been a number of shows. One of them was one of Apple's shows. What is that thing called? It was the video game one. I think I had it as the pick of the week. Um, but they did an entire episode off their iPhones. Like they just shipped iPhones to everybody, uh, set up some lighting and everything, but, uh, they, they did an entire episode shooting off iPhones, uh, which is really cool. They were able to continue shooting and did an entire show in COVID, you know, inside the quarantine, everybody's at their house just doing their own thing. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Evidently, Greg is telling me that the real litmus test I can pay attention to, to know when the iPhone has got there is when the adult film industry

standardizes on them. That's apparently the litmus test for video formats over the last 40 years. So there you go. I have no idea what the adult video industry is doing, but one other thing I did want to touch on. You're at the leading edge of all technology. Yeah, that's right. Guaranteed. One other thing I did find interesting, and then we'll move on to the Snap event most likely here, but the wireless charging. That not going out on a limb

here is definitely a trend we're going to see continue. And I look forward to that day. I'm not particularly sensitive to cable spaghetti relative to many other people I know in clients' homes that I've worked in where people are just like, they just don't want to see that stuff. But it's just gotten to the point now with kids, like we've got, you know, their tablets and we've got our iPhones and I've got my Kindle and there's just always so many cables

and just junk on the kitchen counter, like where we're having to charge all these devices. And I really, I actually really do look forward to the day when wireless charging is just kind of assumed. And I do think we'll get there. We're at the very beginning of it now, so it's still relegated to some of these, I would say, higher-end devices.

Yeah. But it's exciting to see that technology advancing. Yeah, it definitely adds a little bit of a price bump, I'm sure, into anything. They could put this, like, the Qi charging thing into it. You know, it's just another piece of technology that has to fit in there somehow. But, yeah, it would be nice to get down the road.

I don't think it's the most efficient way to charge your phone. Like, I think it still takes a long time to basically, you know, lay the phone on the mat or whatever and use that induction charging. Um, but you know, if you, if you, if you want to charge it fast, just put it, you know, on the lightning cable or whatever, and it'll charge 20 minutes or so. I don't know. Am I weird? Like I just don't, the fast charging thing, like I don't, I guess in some cases I get it. Like if you're traveling and things like that, you get sort of out of your routine and you find yourself in situations where it's like, oh crap, I need to charge my phone. But generally speaking for me, I feel like 98% of the time, like I charge my phone at night and generally speaking,

I don't need to charge it for the rest of the day. Maybe I, I set it on the charger in the evening. If, if I've used it particularly heavily that day and I just want to give it some juice, but like, I just, maybe it's just my schedule and my life and the way things go for me, but I don't always on wifi, never searching for a cell signal. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I just don't find myself in situations where like, that's a, it's just not a pain point for me, I guess. But that could have a lot to do with just the way my life works right now. Well, I noticed, I'm taking mine out running and I noticed that you can, like, if it's

using the GPS the entire time, that'll kind of run it down quite a bit. I think mine may be like, the battery may be going on it or something. So it's good time for me to upgrade. I've noticed the GPS kind of can take it down. And of course, if you're on the phone all day, not on Wi-Fi, you're going to pull your battery down a lot faster. It just depends on your use case and what you're doing. The fast charging is super nice. Like if I come in and notice that I'm down to like 20%, that on probably 15 minutes later it's at 85 right or 100 so it it's kind of convenient to have

but but on the um you know back to the wireless thing i i guess i i need to shore up my knowledge of of the state of of that technology and and where things are sort of going. But I guess I just picture it someday where it just becomes more ubiquitous where you've got maybe a setup in your car that can do the wireless charging and at your desk and by your bed. And so I guess maybe that to me is where the speed of the charging becomes less important if I'm just able to set my phone down and it's smart about it. And it's just constantly sort of keeping it at like a 70 to 80% healthy battery level. Like a trickle charge. Yeah. So it just becomes more ubiquitous and where today you have to think about

plugging it in, or you have to be in a physical location where you can plug it in. If wireless charging becomes more ubiquitous then i i guess that to me also speed of charging is great but is it as necessary if it's just sort of charging without you thinking about it right right it's funny you're mentioning wireless and we have not talked about like the flagship feature that literally no one cares about on this these phones is they all have like 5g now and um the the specs they they talked about getting on the 5g for like download they can get four gigabits per second four gigabits per second uh in in in in ideal conditions is what they said meaning in a lab right and then uh one gigabit per second uh in on in not so ideal conditions probably like real world mostly big drop yeah yeah but but it's still

gigabit internet you know well it is yeah it's just crazy it goes from four to one i wonder if that's has anything to do with i i know 5g is one of the big concerns about it or big challenges inherent with that technology is the the range line aside because it's a high such a high frequency that it does not do well traveling through surfaces and things like that so maybe that's why you see such a such a precipitous drop but like you said even even at the low end i mean that's that's gigabit that's wildabit. That's wild. It'll be interesting to see what that brings. There was a bunch of Verizon talk.

I think Verizon was on the stage for a long time, the virtual stage, saying that they're going to be rolling out a bunch of 5G infrastructure. I've seen the little towers go up around town. They're weird. They're like light poles. I don't know. Have you noticed them going up or I'm sure I've probably seen them. I've not, I've not really, they haven't entered my consciousness, right? I haven't noticed them, but I'm, I'm sure they're going up everywhere. They're not like, they're very ubiquitous, but they're not as like, uh, noticeable as a giant cell phone tower. Right. Um, it's,

it's more like a light pole with this weird thing stuck on the top of it or in some cases it's like an um a sculpted almost like a light one of those like fancy parks that you go to and they have those fancy light fixtures for their you know when you're walking through like just a very tall one that looks like it has this round it doesn't even look like an antenna i i had no idea what they were until i saw the permits being pulled i was like what what is going on i found the city was dropping off these permits where i'm like oh that's a 5g um verizon tower but they're they're probably 30 foot tall they're not if that 25 30 foot tall they're not they're not very big um yeah and they're just plopped around the city they're they're probably 30 foot tall they're not if that 25 30 foot tall they're not they're not very big um yeah and they're just plopped around the city they're just on sidewalks in the middle

of boulevards i mean they're just wherever they have to be they have to roll these out like very very densely because the what you said you you get you you get on the other side of a a building and the signal's gone. It just disappears. Yeah. Yeah. Rashid said, walk around the corner from the tower and watch your speeds drop. Well, that's good. I mean, the aesthetics of it, similar to cable spaghetti in my home, I don't consider myself particularly sensitive to this sort of thing, but cell towers are ugly and they are, my favorite

are the ones that they try to make look like trees or things like that. Do they have those out, out there where you are? Yep. Yep. They've got some that look like palm trees. Unfortunately they look like giant, like pine trees. Yeah. Okay. They do the pine trees out there too. Yeah. Ours are definitely pine trees and i i don't know i mean to their credit they they look better than a a non-tree cell tower uh but they're they're bad all the same so yeah yeah they they also have big flagpole ones i don't know if you've noticed those but you'll be driving along on the highway and look over and see this 200 foot flagpole with the flag sitting on top and it's like oh that's and then you know

it's it's a cell you can see the cell phone stuff sticking on it like it's but yeah it's pretty well concealed but you know it's a cell phone tower i used to work with a guy who's a fellow project manager with me when this was back in my via days and his previous job before getting into the integration industry he worked for a company that was hired exclusively to install cell towers in ways that minimized visual disruption. So apparently there, and not shockingly, but apparently there are businesses that actually specialize in trying to make those things blend in. And I can see why, because when they don't even try and you get the big cell tower that's got just antennas sticking every which direction and you know they're they they are an

eyesore they are but if you ever if you ever find out how much you get paid to have one of those on your property you'd be like oh yeah put this in my backyard yeah i'll take two i'll take two exactly yeah that's funny cool well good yeah good stuff out of out of apple i i think that the like i said going back to where we started the home pod makes a lot of sense and seth you won that bet but um there's always the next one it's always the next yeah exactly who knows what we'll have? I mean, having a HomePod mini and a low cost solution for bringing in the smart home, you know, outside of your phone and into your house. Well, I'm very curious as to what more resources Apple starts devoting towards the smart home, you know, to like, Oh, Oh, one of the big, uh, hidden features. I did not put this in the show notes is, uh, in the fine print, uh, the, the home pod has thread built into it. So thread is Zigbee.

Oh, interesting. So it looks like this thing is going to be ready for the chip stuff when that rolls out probably next year. So they're just getting, getting the antennas in place, but it'll be next year before we see probably anything rolled out that says chip on it. Right. Well, good spot.

Yeah, and that'll be something to keep an eye on for sure. All right, we want to shift gears to Snap Pro Live. This was a big event for the industry, Seth. You and I, I know we're both looking forward to this, and I was able to watch a couple of, I mean, this is still going on, I believe, until tomorrow as we're recording. We record on Wednesdays.

Yep. So this is still going on. We're about halfway through the event, a little more than halfway through the event at this point. I was able to tune in for a little bit of the opening keynote live. I did watch the full opening keynote, the recorded version after the fact and popped into a panel or two. There was one panel this morning that good friend of the show, James, was on, HomePlay. Saw him on there. So overall, I've enjoyed watching the event and I think that I'm not surprised to see that I would tip my hat to SnapAV. I think they've done

a really good job with it. The interface for the website is generally, I think, pretty good. They had an app as well. I didn't install the app. I'm not sure if you did, Seth, but it appears they're using a platform, Socio, I think is how you pronounce it, S-O-C-I-O, socio.events. I saw that in one of the URLs, so I went and checked them out. Indeed, their tagline on the main page of the website is, I want to get this right, it's getting as close to live as a virtual event can. So this appears to be a company that's really specializing in helping companies get these virtual events up to something similar to what a live event would be. And then the last kind of opening comment that I wanted to hit on here with the Snap Pro Live event

was the quality of production. The opening keynote was very well produced, very professional. They had leaders on from a bunch of different areas of the company, starting with John Heyman, the CEO, and then working through Charlie Kindle, G. Paul Hess, Kenny Kim, a bunch of other folks. We'll get into some of those other names were on there as well, but they all did short segments talking about key areas of the business. And I thought the pacing was really good. The production quality was great. So overall, I thought it was so far has been a great event. And I think a good example for other companies to take a look at, even if you don't maybe have the resources that SnapAV does, you can at least look and draw some inspiration.

If you're planning your own virtual event, I think they've the keynote, but you have taken part as far as live watching and participation, I think I've been to maybe three of them. Nice, nice. I did, after the Apple keynote abruptly ended, about 60 minute-ish after it started, which is kind of shocking for an Apple keynote in an hour. I was able to hop on over to the SnapAV keynote and watch that. And like you said, it was well done. It did move along. There was a lot of SnapAV

talk. It took them like 30 minutes before they started talking about anything I found interesting, like new products. It was like Kenny Kim came on. I'm like, all right, we're going to get some good overseas stuff now, you know, but it took him like more than 30 minutes to get Kenny on the, on the, uh, on the TV screen. So, um, uh, I think, I think they could, they could, uh, I think it's a great first effort and, uh, beef that up a little. They could learn from Apple and see how they were able. I mean, geez, I, I, we didn't really talk about it, but that Apple has just, they're firing on all cylinders with their little commercial things that they're doing.

Um, they're able just to like, they talked about environmental stuff that they were doing. They were just able to blow through one, two, three, four, um, things right, right. Just right after a row. And I don't know if you, if you looked at, um, how they introduced the HomePod and what they did with that. They had like an entire set, like a house set up without the fourth wall. So you could see into all the rooms of the house and everything.

And they kind of went from room to room and panned in and out. And it was just, it's all virtual, of course, and all done. And I'm not trying to say SnapAV should do anything like this at all, but the way they just moved everything along um one thing after another i think uh was missed on the snap av as soon as you come off something like hi you got your adrenaline running you you've been getting you know tidbit information information new product new product new product new feature new feature and you get over to snap av and it'sV and they're talking about the business for 30 minutes. It's like, okay, we've slowed down now.

Yeah. It's interesting. Interesting comparison. I think to pause on that for a minute, obviously very different audiences, right? Apple consumer all the way, SnapAV 100% dedicated to the pro. Sure. And I think that that shined through in this event. I think a couple of the notes that I made about the keynote, in particular, John Heyman's opening section, the language choices are interesting. There are things that we actually have embraced at OneVision as well. We call all of our integrators that we work with partners. We always have. I did notice they had changed that. So they're using language like partners. They're talking a lot about the investments that they're making to continue to make the business better. And I think it's pretty clear that SnapAV's grand strategy here is to just completely own the professional install.

Like they do as a company really truly believe in the value of a professional. And as much as DIY and do it for me, consumer Consumer focused smart home solutions are growing and evolving. They as a company are really putting their chips down on the fact that the pro is not going anywhere. And so I liked the focus on the business. I could see the juxtaposition. Like if you were just coming from the Apple event and you're coming straight over to the Snap Pro event, it's like bit of whiplash there i suppose because it definitely was much more business oriented that opening keynote but they should go first next time go first but different strokes for different folks right yeah well i i did think

it was interesting um right after uh was it john haymans uh there was someone talking and I did not write down his name. But I, I recognize it. If I saw it, he was talking about how they are investing in local snap AV stores to basically get their product to dealers as fast as they possibly can. I mean, if it's local,

how fast can it, you know, it's you, there's really no shipping. You just go down to the local snap AV branch and pick it up. And they've made, you know, significant advance investments in, you investments in buying up distributors here in the States

and opening local branches. They showed some pictures of it. It looked really nice. You go in and pick up some episode speakers or Aragnas network stuff. Just pick it off the shelf and take it out to the job site. From there, you don't really even have to stock anything in your warehouse anymore, which is kind of nice, kind of like a just-in-time type delivery mechanism for the professional install industry. Yeah, absolutely. I thought that emphasis on local selling and local

distribution was interesting as well. And then not surprisingly, continued emphasis and discussion, even at the very early stages of the opening keynote from John Heyman about the continued investments that they're going to make in e-commerce and really continuing to shore that up. And that really, if you go back to the beginning, that's what put SnapAV in the position they're in today. That was rocket fuel when they were the first one. And it sounds so obvious now, but I think these things always do when you're looking back. It always looks like a straight line looking back, but they really seemed to crack the code when it was like, hey, how about just making it really easy to buy stuff? Yeah. As obvious as that sounds, that's been their MO forever. when it was like, hey, how about just making it really easy to buy stuff? Yeah, yeah. Right?

As obvious as that sounds, that's been their MO forever. Yeah. Make it easy for the dealer. Yep. I mean, people really don't understand what was going on back then. I had vendors and distrib that, that they were like, well, can you fax over your order? I'm like, are you kidding me? I need this now. And they, you know, they send me a, um, a PDF version of an Excel sheet, um, of their, you know, their pricing list. And I'm like, or a PDF, you know, a beautifully done PDF with all their pricing kind of mixed in randomly where

you can't just look at it all in one spot. I I need this in my ordering system. Can you give me an Excel sheet? Uh, well here's, you know, it's just like pulling teeth. You go to Snappy V, they had all that stuff for you. So yeah, it's, it was night and day. Um, when they, when they entered the market, uh, geez, it was a while back, more than 10, 15 years ago. Yep. Um, so yeah, uh, they had a, they had a number of, uh, new product announcements on here. Uh, the first one I think was kicked off by Kenny Kim announcing some new over oversee features. And Jason, I see you have a couple of notes on there that I didn't take down. So yeah, you want to take that one?

Yeah. I think generally I wanted to first mention, I'm glad we came to this early in the Snap discussion, because I was struck not just by the, I would say not even so much by the specifics of what they mentioned, more so I was struck by the prevalence of oversee throughout. It was mentioned by John Heyman early in his opening part of the keynote, and he made reference to cracking the code on recurring revenue as well. Kenny Kim, obviously, it was the core focus for him. I think Charlie Kindle even mentioned it, and it just came up throughout.

So it was a big overriding theme in that keynote, and I think central to SnapAV's strategy of wanting to really own the professional smart home as a whole, as an ecosystem, and clearly trying to be more than just a provider of hardware, they want to be a platform for really servicing the home end-to-end. And I think that it was interesting to see the emphasis on overseas. As far as specific things they mentioned, you know, they talked about a new overseas system being brought online every five minutes. So that's just kind of an interesting statistic. But as far as, again, specific features, full package support. So they talked a bit about the, by the end of the year, I should say, full package support by the end of the year. That is good to hear an update on that. We've known, I think it was just a month or two ago. They announced for the first time, their official plans to bring those platforms together.

Of course, PackEdge, iHeG and Oversee all under one roof now. So it's good to hear an update on that. Didn't hear anything about iHeG. That was notably absent to me. They talked specifically about package support, but I didn't catch any specifics, at least in the keynote, about what the latest on the transition plan is for iHeG devices. So that's one to be paying attention to. And then what one I thought was really cool was the the Wi Fi management through oversee now. So similar to, you know, I in at least a very loose sense, I'm not intimately familiar with either of these platforms, but similar in a loose sense to something like a ubiquity platform where you've got one interface to configure all of your access points, versus the old pain in the butt model of having to log in to,

you know, 192.168.whatever and get into the local UI of every access point, get all the settings consistent across them. You've now got the ability to do all that from a central oversee interface. So that's a nice feature, certainly for anybody doing Package or Arachnus networks. And to be fair, i think it's become like expected you know yeah it's almost table stakes now yeah sure yeah so i'm glad i'm actually i'm really glad to see it come to the brand and this was almost like catch up for them right like they really needed to do this yep and i'm glad they did because it's it was definitely needed i mean it is a pain like you said it's a pain in the butt to write down all the access point ip addresses go to them one at a time make the setting oh it didn't work go to the

next one you know and and and retest and everything it's so much easier to do that in a unified dashboard um of some type so yeah i think most trying to think most of the vendors out there have already had something like this but um seeing this come to Arachnus for dealers, it's good. Yeah. And I know not, there's some comments in the chat room. I know not everybody loves PackEdge or Arachnus, right? The jury's still out, certainly, on SnapAV as a vendor of network gear. And I guess the quality and reliability reliability i don't know if there are

really specific things i'm not super savvy a lot of ruckus i can tell you that with uh with with networks and and where they're sort of lacking maybe on the specific feature side but i know generally that that i i think the you know as if I zoom way out and paint with extremely broad strokes, the industry, I feel like still has a big question mark around those lines. But I do feel like, you know, SnapAV is moving in the right direction on them. Yeah. Yeah. Next thing up, I noticed that the PC is kind of sticking to the network thing, the PCNA education thing, a package certified network. Administrator, I guess, is what it used to be called. They rebranded it to a professional certified network administrator. And now you can use both package and Arachnids gear for that certification. Um, I'm, I'm, you know, say what you will about the two brands. I'm still all

for this because, uh, this is, this is dealers need dealers and their installers need this education. This is, this is something that should not be optional. Um, because networking is hard and it's, it's not just blinking lights and knowing an IP address or two. Um, it's, it's, it's, there's a lot to it. There's entire careers built around this. So getting any amount of education that you possibly can to know how to set something up, right. Uh, you know, I'm all for this. So, uh, this, this is a good initiative. I, I'm glad to see snap AV, uh, you know, rolling it out and, and, and bringing it to more than just the package crowd. Cause I think that was more of a Control 4 initiative.

Now it's a full Snap AV initiative and they can get it out to the Ragnus guys too. Yeah. And convenient from a branding standpoint that they got to just change the P from Pack Edge to professional. Done. They didn't even have to come up with a new initialism for it. No, no. So good on them.

No, I think it's great. There was an emphasis on training and continued sort of education for the partners, SnapAV partners in the keynote. And I think that's a great thing. I love it. I think that, you know, as much as Cedia can and should do for training in the industry, I think that Cedia will always be a little bit limited in terms of what they can do because they have to stay neutral. They can't really go into specific brands and talk about those things. And so I think that's not bad or good. It just is what it is. And ultimately, I think that for the industry to continue getting better, again, painting in

very broad strokes here, but for the industry to continue improving and raising the bar for the client experience, the training and education has to be a really core component of that. And I think a big component of the training and education has to come from vendors. Vendors have to figure out better ways to do this. And so I think seeing any company invest in doing this, I've got another coworker that I work with who comes from a deep training background. And he often cites the fact that in business business training is often the first thing you need and the last thing you do. Oh, sure. And I think it's, it's very, it's very true. Like we all have the initial training and onboarding that we do with, with employees. That's one thing, but it's that ongoing training and the, the development of knowledge bases and training materials that keep up with your evolving

products and services is incredibly difficult to, to keep up with. And, and so I, I hope that, that SnapAV can, can lead the way on that with, with at least handling it in their little corner, in their corner of the industry. Yep. Uh, another new product that came up, uh, I'm just kind of like going down the list of things that I noticed kind of zooming. I did watch most of this, but, um, just kind of going back through and picking out high points I saw. I probably did miss a couple of things, but they've got some new mega in-room subwoofers that have a little companion app with it that you can use to EQ the sub and turn it up and down, that kind of thing. We sell a brand that has something similar to this called ELAC, and they that kind of thing. Um, that kind of reminds me, we sell a brand that has something similar to this called, called ELAC and they're kind of a high end brand.

Um, but it, this, this makes setting up like this is, this is kind of cool trend I'm seeing, like where you have like an app on your phone that has like a, it has a microphone in the phone. It can analyze the audio in the room and you could just go around um and balance the room the sub with that i mean sonos is doing that too but it's nice to see it that kind of technology um put into dealers hands where they can go in and set a sub up properly for a room yeah agreed and i don't have a ton on the audio side i it's just not a, admittedly not a part of the industry that I'm super interested in. But from a business perspective, I did find it at least interesting in the sense that it was a big area of focus for them. And I know that it is an area that remains in spite of all of the downward pricing pressure

in any technology industry. Ours is not any exception to that. Speakers and amplifiers and these sorts of things do remain a very profitable part of the business. Good margins in those still. And so that'll, I'm sure, continue to fuel emphasis on SnapAV's side on the audio. Good speakers. And then they, I'm sure, continue to fuel emphasis on SnapAV's side on the audio. Good speakers.

And then they, I think they were saying, what are the conversations? I don't know if this is something new that they're doing. And I did not write down the name of the, you know, they have all different names of their lines and everything. But the gentleman that was talking said something about designers are looking for smaller speakers to basically match the fixtures that are going into the house yeah and so that they're they're they're focusing and releasing new product that's going to you know sound good but have a lower profile so they're there to match the speakers sorry the the fixtures whether they be you know square or circular uh and you know probably be you know, square or circular, uh, and, you know, probably be

four inches in size and that kind of thing. So, um, that that's, that's always, it's always tough. You get into like a high end home and they have like super high end fixtures in the house. And you're like, I got this giant speaker to put right here. Is this where you were? Right. So yeah, anything we can do to, to keep the ceiling cluttered down and make it look like it's built in part of the room, uh, is a good thing. It's a good thing. And that, you know, brings up a good quick point, just that like aesthetics in the home are always changing and they're always going to be changing. And that's a great thing for the professional home technology industry, because it means that there's always going to be opportunities to continue evolving the way speakers look. And the performance enhancements are great. Those are a

whole nother thing. But even if the performance stayed steady, there's always going to be opportunities to make architectural speakers match the ever-evolving aesthetics of the home. And again, that's a great thing for all of us. And I thought at the very end, a friend of the home. And again, that's a great, that's a great thing for all of us. And I thought at the, at the very end, a friend of the show, G Paul Hess jumped on there and had a, had a, had a conversation towards the end and said that they were introducing 200 new products this year and adding 400 third-party products, which is crazy. 600 products in a year. We, you know, I'm kind of a distributor too i work at a distributor too we add products a couple times per year and it's stressful but 600 products it would be uh would be maddening so yeah it's pretty amazing feat i'm i can't imagine snap av is a particularly

relaxing place to work i can't imagine either yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Moving into, by the way, actually one quick point on that, the third-party products reminded me, and I think this is a little bit different because in that specific context that you just mentioned, Seth, they're talking probably about mostly distributing third-party products, but it did call to mind a comment that was made regarding third-party integration. And that was a note I made about, again, going back to the very opening section of the keynote from John Heyman, ongoing commitment to openness and integration. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but those are fairly close to the exact words that he used. And I was glad to hear that because that is one of the big concerns. Anytime you get a company as big as SnapAV,

particularly in a very niche and small industry like ours, is will that remain? And will they continue to stay open and play nice with others, because especially when you get into things like the smart home and integration and oversee and remote support and all of these other things, that openness and integration is absolutely vital. Right, right. Well, the second part of this was kind of like the Control 4 part of it. And Control 4 had a number of new products. They had a new in-wall outlet, that Wi-Fi outlet basically that comes in nine colors, kind of a neat little add-on,

or not Wi-Fi, I guess it'd be Zigbee for Control 4, and an outdoor plug-in module, kind of weatherproof, like inline. You just basically plug it into the wall outside and it can live outside. And you plug, I don't know, Christmas lights or landscaping lights or something into it. Right. On the other end. And you can control it with your Control 4 system.

So both of those, I think, have been missing in their lineup for a while. And they have added those to their product lineup. Then you get some new T4 touchscreens, which it's been, man, that's, it's been a long time coming. The, the T3s I think have been out forever. I was wondering about that. I, I've kind of lost, lost track of where the timing was at on that. So I was wondering how, how due or overdue they were for, for an upgrade, but these T4s, they look pretty nice. They were, they were very overdue for touchscreens. Yeah, they kind of looked, I don't know,

they looked about the same to me. Here's an old T3 sitting here. Yeah, I was curious for your perspective on these. I mean, they look the same, which I guess is good. The T3s are minimal. Now, when you say look the same, are you saying aesthetically or even from like a performance perspective?

Performance perspective, I expect them to be a little a little bit better than the old t3s the t3s were just i mean they're they're long in the tooth i think it's like android 4.2 on these things so that's what 10 years ago i don't know it's it's a good ways back i'm not sure what version of android these are going to be running. Yeah. She's saying they're hopefully faster. I agree. Performance wise, it should be just night and day difference if they're putting anything modern in there. One of the biggest things that they have improved on this is on wall there's uh there's two versions of it a 10 inch and an 8 inch which is nice um but they have given us a different mounting option rather than like it uses magnets now to clip onto the wall rather than these like clips that um like you push the

touchscreen onto the wall and it locked in place and then you basically had to cut drywall to get it off it's just impossible like it was you may as well just super glued an ipad to the wall and called it a day some epoxy yeah yeah that's jb willed or something um so they they have uh they have they have done a good thing for the installers out there who have broken many touchscreens and drywall trying to get these things ripped out of the wall because they either lost the little bracket thing that you use to to take them off the wall or were impatient or didn't line it up right or whatever i don't know like i have broken many of them in my lifetime and i stopped installing those

six years ago seven years ago now so like it's been a while. Those things are just a pain. I'm glad they, magnets, how do they work? It's this new cutting edge technology. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. Neo remote and scarlet red, limited edition, Seth. What do you think of this? What's your take? I don't know. They've done this before. They did this with the T3s when they came out years ago um i guess if you want a red remote there it is yeah i i doesn't really appeal to me any i'm i could take my neo down and spray paint it red too and see how it looks but some people will buy these i'm sure oh i'm sure i'm sure yeah i'm envisioning like like i i looked at it and instantly

thought of homes that I worked in when I was out in Los Angeles, where that particular color would just fit into the very particular aesthetic of certain high-end homes where I could see certain clients being like, give me 10 of them, right? Like crazy stuff like that. But anyways, no, I don't have a ton to say about it. I thought it was, you know, it's not a color that appeals to me, but it looks like it'll be attractive to certain people for sure. It's eye-catching. I think they should take a cue from Apple and, you know, release a couple of colors, you know, like, yeah, it doesn't just have to be. I think they're in silver. They may be in black.

I don't know. Maybe just be one color right now or Neos. I have been out of this game for a while, so they should offer a couple, you know, like just take a look at what is trending with the iPhones and iPads and make colors just like that. And yeah, those will fit into everybody's decor fairly easily and fairly readily so yeah um volume control feedback they on the 260 remotes is kind of cool that's in the new software update so everybody who has 260 remotes will get that you have little when you press volume up and down i guess if you have a source that gives you the volume feedback you'll get the volume number percentage on your 260 remotes which is kind of nice those haven't been touched in a very long time either right

right that that makes sense there was a couple other things seth here that i wanted to several things here i wanted to get your take on, but these ones in particular, Ted Hager mentioned that interfaces are getting automatic updates now. So that's one. And then this might be totally separate. So feel free to break these apart completely. But there was another one where, I'm sure these are totally separate, I should say, but there was another point he made that something to the effect, it was a very passing comment, but something to the effect of driver development getting easier. Like they had done some things to enhance the driver development process.

They didn't seem to go into any details, so I'm not sure if you even have any comments on that, but I was interested to ask you about it. Well, okay, so let's start with the interfaces being to be able to update like so control 4 did this weird thing a couple of months back maybe i don't even remember what it is it's all kind of like blurred together this year and and last year at this point but um they did like a rollout of a feature i want to say it was just a couple months ago uh where they added in they released 3.0 right the big 3.0 release with the new interface on the and they released it without having like a section

or a button like a comfort button or something like that and it's kind of weird because like if you run 2.9 or 2.10 and you upgraded to 3.0 like all of a sudden you couldn't control your thermostats from your tv or something so control 4 ran this like really interesting thing where they rolled out that feature upgrade to all of the interfaces without actually rolling a new version of the controller does that make sense like the dealer didn't have to go out and hit update yeah like the feature just appeared there. Yeah. So that's huge, I think. I think that's probably one of those features

that they've been working on in the background for a long time where they can kind of update components of the controller if as they need to, whether it be interface or, you know, some software that runs on the controller itself. There's a term for this in the software world, and I really can't remember what it was from like 10 years ago when I was actually doing the same thing with another company. But it seems like they have put all of those pieces in place and now they can basically just kind of pick and choose what they would if they they have a hot fix or something or they find a

bug in in the interface and they want to roll it out without having to have the dealers go out and press a button on every single install they can just slip that in and it gets updated and they don't have there's no rolling a truck truck involved, which is, which is awesome, which is really good. I think that's what most people would expect to happen these days. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I feel like, like generally again, I might, I might be conflating topics here a little bit, but generally I've, I've liked the trend in technology over the last however many years where like automatic updates, like updates are just something that you just have to think about less and less these days. Like

generally speaking, I just turn on automatic updates and let it do its thing where in the past, like it was something you had to be very conscious of and you had to always be sort of giving effort to updating things. And so I like seeing that trend continue in the professional space, not just for the fact that I think it's better for consumers where you can patch things automatically and more quickly, but also from a business perspective, like you said, not requiring professionals to go out and manually do these updates and be in the home to do every little thing is is self evidently good so i'm glad to see that and as far as the driver development getting easier um i don't i it's kind of hard to say i don't know that it has gotten any easier um one of the big

things that has been a kind of a push in the last couple of months, uh, that I've been kind of involved with them on was, um, they, they have moved all their documentation over to GitHub. So you can actually, anybody can actually go to github.com slash control four and see the driver works API documentation and, uh, see basically how drivers are all put together and that kind of thing. Um, there it's, that's kind of big because as I was complaining about before with PDFs, uh, that's what we were getting in the past where these kind of broken PDFs that had all sorts of errors in them, they were never really like fully updated. Um, now what we can do is actually fork. It's kind of a more, we can actually, we could submit our own edits i

guess back to them so like we find a bug in the documentation or a bug uh something broken in the documentation we can submit a bug back to them and they can actually push that into the documentation as soon as they do that it goes live to their documentation online so um it's it's kind of a nice it's very nice to have them have moved. There's been a ton of work that they've done to get that up and going. So that definitely makes driver development easier. And then some of the things they mentioned, like there's a driver add driver feature. I really don't find that very compelling to use at this point in time, but maybe in the future it'll be a little bit user, more user friendly.

But I can't say, I have pause. Cause I have feelings on this. This is what I do as a day job. So like I pick my work words wisely. Um, control four has been, um, a lot more responsive on the development side, uh, after the snap AV takeover. So, um, it really feels like I'm working with a company, uh, who was a partner in the past, but they really want to be a partner now. Uh, and, and there, there, there's more interaction, like suggestions that, that I can make go up the chain and I actually get a response on them. So it's, it's definitely feeling like more of a partnership with them there, uh, in them there in that respect than it ever has before. And I say that ever has before.

I've been doing driver development with Control Force for like 10 plus years. I don't know, maybe not 10 years, but since 1.6, which is way back. So it's really nice to see them working on not just the new hardware announcements and the stuff that we've gone over, but like the actual product product. Um, it is pretty advanced system and it's nice to actually get in there and actually as a developer, get out, be able to get

in and integrate things and do my own things. I I've been like, we were just talking for the show. I integrated a, a Yamaha MTX, uh, driver this last week. I've been working on that thing since, uh, since January. Like it's been a long process. It's been in beta test in a bar. Like it's been out in production since like, uh, May. So like I I've had, I had plenty of projects on my plate since, since, since that time. But it's like one of these things where it's like, I'm just slowly and steadily chipping away at at this at this product and and and every along the way i'm like how do i do this how do i get this feature done i can just reach over to somebody i know at control four they tell me it's it's just been it's been a lot better over the last couple of uh months uh working with them so it's good

you're you're an old hand seth so that that's good uh good good perspectives you've been been doing this a while i've seen it all with control four so yeah i was i was keenly interested to hear your take on that but i want to move to i i think the big finish here for us anyways uh the control four chime video doorbell so this was their, I would say their biggest announcement. I think they are at least from their perspective, right? This was kind of the, the finale of the, of the opening keynote. And I think it looks great. I mean, I, it's another one of those things almost from a macro perspective, like looking at the smart home as a whole, I would almost go back to the comment you made about networking configuration tools. Like it almost feels like table stakes now

that a company like Control4 should have their own video doorbell. This is a category that has become so ubiquitous in the smart home. And I know even several years ago when I was still an integrator recently, this was a, this was a pain point for us. It was always like, man, we're, we're, we've got this client who's a perfect fit for a fully integrated control four system. But every time we get to the doorbell, we got to go outside of, outside of the ecosystem and we got to figure out ways to integrate other devices like Ring or Doorbird or whatever it was. And so I'm sure that any Control 4 dealer is probably really excited to see this and now be able to offer that again as part of a fully integrated ecosystem. Yep. No, this is big. i think it's bigger than than than most people

want to believe the ds2 which is their like two-in rebranded door station was i mean like twelve hundred dollars right or maybe more like two thousand dollars depends on like what size you got yeah i didn't mention that yeah but you're right like there there were ways we could go but it was like damn it's so expensive and like you hold that up next to a whatever two three hundred dollar ring it was a it was that was a tough sale right i think this one's still like maybe five hundred dollars for this one but still that's like you said holding it up next to a two dollar or two three hundred dollar ring kind of makes more sense at that point um especially since like all you know through their intercom anywhere app uh everything kind of gets integrated into one app. You don't have

to bounce back and forth. Um, you can just like leave it all under one, one house, so to speak. Uh, so that is nice. Uh, that is very nice. And, uh, you know, we've had the, we've had ring integrations, uh, for control four and URC for a number of years now, but they've only been kind of like the events and that's what we call it, ring events. And because of the way ring works, you know, and Control 4 and literally every other platform out there works, getting video into these systems is almost impossible.

This is a, you know, product designed to work within the Control 4 ecosystem, not the other way around where you're wedging a square. You're trying to wedge a square peg into a round hole. It's more like with Ring and Control 4, it's more like a hexagonal. It's like one of those blob things that you see with like spikes sticking off of it and you're trying to push it into a circle. Like it's just not going to work so um this is really exciting to see and i think it'll be a big big uh i think it's going to be a big seller uh for control for years they're gonna have no problem moving this yeah i agree

uh hardware looks nice five megapixel 180 degree camera five different motion zones on the app side seth you had a note here merged control 4 and intercom app one app again yep a i got a general sense for that but yeah elaborate on that a little bit well it used to be two apps like the intercom anywhere app used to be outside of the control 4 control app and now they have rolled that together so if you're on iphone you just have to have one one app now and the intercom abilities are built into the iPhone app. Um, I'm not sure why they ever did that. It's kind of been like their stick for the whole time. Like it just needs to have one app and, uh, you know, they needed to for a very long time. Uh, so I'm not sure why they went that

direction, but, uh, I'm glad to see the two code bases, I guess, brought together where they can use both inner, you know, brought together where they can use both. You know, you can have intercom directly in the app that you're using to control the house. One really cool thing on this is within that interface, the dealer can actually set up like custom buttons. You know, so if you're looking at your front door or whatever, you can have a button on there that, you know, turn on the lights, unlock the door. That kind of thing could be right on the interface because it's all control for you. You'd be right on the interface and you can press that button and have those actions happen i think there's a really cool feature and um glad to see it happening but glad to finally see it

happening because it's it's been a long time like you said this is this is this feels like it should be table stakes but man there really just hasn't been many video doorbells out there that are compatible with like our systems right doorbird is one of them but those are kind of ugly i guess i'll just say yeah ring has been great for aesthetics but it just it's you know it's more like a a desk phone it's like not not a camera it's a desk phone yeah and there's some other ones out there greg mentions 2n i know holovision i worked with a bunch of different holovision ones and i just just, I don't know, man, I always had a tough time just with the sale on those and the price point. Like, they're good for the aesthetics, and in certain environments, you absolutely need that.

But I think that, yeah, having a self-contained solution that just natively integrates with the Control Force system is going to be a hot seller. It goes back to your one neck to ring, right? One throat to choke. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You want to keep that sort of single piece flow, to use a term for manufacturing, it applies to the integrated home.

The more ecosystems you have trying to operate with each other, the more problems you're going to have. I feel like that's a, there's a law, a smart home law in there somewhere that somebody could, could elaborate on. And I feel like that's just inherent in the integrators job is the industry's job as a whole is to try to minimize that disruption from that, to make those things work nicely together. But if you can avoid having to go across ecosystems, I feel like that's always going to be a better option, all other things being equal. The last thing that I wanted to point out specifically that I thought was kind of cool

about the Chime video doorbell, and again, there may have been ways you could do this before using just smart programming and things like, you could have probably done this before, but ultimately they highlighted it in the keynote. And I thought it was interesting, the idea of like simulated occupancy. So if somebody rings your control for chime, you could actually set it up to where, you know, it looks like somebody's waking up in the master bedroom and turning on those lights and then turning on the hall lights and then turning on, like you could have it almost look like somebody was getting up and coming through the

home to come to the front door. They talked about triggering audio as well through the speakers to make it sound like somebody was talking. So again, just that idea of simulated occupancy. I know for us, not right now with COVID and everything going on, but we travel during certain times of the year. We'll be gone for a couple of weeks at a time. And anything that I can do to make me feel more secure about my home, particularly when I'm not there, is a very attractive proposition. So I don't know that that thing alone is going to be the compelling thing that makes people go buy this, but it's a really nice thing.

I think a nice feature and a nice selling point for the system as well. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see what the uptake on this is going to be and what the feedback dealers give. They're very critical of Ring. I can tell you that.

We sell a lot of Ring. I will say we're taking an integration on the road so to speak and we'll be announcing shortly i mean rti one's already done but rti and elan integrations with ring so it'll be it'll be the same ring events still can't get video into these systems but um you know uh it's still reasons that a ring device may show up at your job site, right? Like the customer can go down to Costco and buy whatever they want for a hundred dollars. And if it's there, um, and you still have the ability to integrate it with basic events functions, I think that's, that's pretty huge. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So all in all a couple of, uh, really big events

this week that lined up same day literally is when they, at least when the snap pro event started. So it's, it's been a busy one and this was fun getting together and hashing it out with you, Seth. Yep. This is a, it was, it was, it was a stressful, uh, Tuesday. It wasn't so bad. Like my wife wanted to watch the apple one she she's she's been jonesing for a new phone she's she's like i said she's on the 10 like you and she's she's been she's wanted to see what they were going to come out with because i've been telling her i mean like all the new finds are they're going to show them off on tuesday so we'll watch it and we were we were in there making tacos and, and watching the, uh, the, uh, the

Apple event. Love it. Love it. Well, all the links and topics that we've discussed on this week's episode can be found in our show notes at home tech.fm slash three, two, three home tech.fm slash three, two, three. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great stuff going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 323. Yeah. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting somewhere between 7 and 8 p.m. Eastern tonight. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live seth big pick of the week this week we we passed a milestone a while back i'm not gonna steal your thunder on this one i'm gonna let you

i'm gonna let you tee this one up i almost just left the number on there just to like just to see what it is but yeah we don't toot our horn very often jason because um we don't actually look the numbers for our shows that we just, we come on, we record, we put the show up and, uh, whoever's listening listens. And that's, it's just kind of like a labor of love and a passion project for both of us, I think. Um, but yeah, we did pass a huge milestone. We've passed the, uh, we've got, so I went and looked at the statistics and for the lifetime of the show, starting way back on February 2014, geez, how young were we then?

Yeah, crazy. We have had 509,000 downloads of the show, of all the shows. That's awesome. That's wild. That's great. Over half a million. That's huge. Yeah, yeah.

So big number. Thought I'd put it in as the pick of the week. Just to kind of toot our own horn a little bit. You got to do it sometimes good old pat on the back, but yeah, have a half a million downloads kind of wild. Yeah, that is, that is pretty cool. And it's been, uh, it's been a lot of fun. I won't ramble on about this for long, but it's hard to believe it's been six years and really have had a great time putting the show together with you, Seth. And most of all, just the, the, the people that we've met, the community around the show, uh, it's all really great stuff. So this is cool. I check, go, go check the numbers

periodically. Um, but yeah, just didn't realize we were at quite approaching that milestone. So that's, that's really neat. Yeah. We must've blown past it fairly recently. I just had, like you said, haven't obtained attention, but, um, I will agree with everything you said there. Uh, it's been fun making the show and, um, yeah, everybody, everybody that, that pops in the hub or has sent an email in, you know, asking a question or two, it's, it's been really fun. All the interviews, heck going back to some of those early interviews that we had and and seeing who we had on the show at the time and it was it's a different world then but it's it's it was a lot of fun yeah to get people and and bring them on and and have a good

have just have a chat about home technology that's really all we're looking for yeah if i could if i could manufacture more hours in the day i'd love to go back and do like a highlight reel since we started and kind of go just watch. It's been interesting zooming out from the show just as the story arc of the industry has been really interesting to watch. Like we started this around the time when Nest got acquired for over 3 billion from Google and hub mania that ensued and then that sort of tapered off. Kickstart, yeah, like all of that. And it's just, it's been an interesting ride for the industry as a whole,

not just for the show. Right, right. Well, if you have any comments, feedback, questions, picks of the week, or great ideas for a future show, give us a shout. Our email address is at feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online

form. And as we always do, we want to give a big thanks to everyone who supports and listens to the show, but especially to those of you who contribute to our Patreon page. If you don't know about this, head on over to hometech.fm slash support, where you can learn how to support the show for as little as a dollar a month. We're an entirely listener-supported show, so we really appreciate all of those pledges. Any pledge over $5, we'll give you a big shout out on the air, but every pledge, even at that $1 level, we'll give you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather for every day, daily conversations about home technology. And let's see, what was the topic this week? I think theater design stuff.

Theater design. Yeah, we had some productivity chat this week, which I'm always good for. So, yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And if you'd like to help out but can't support the show financially we'd appreciate if you throw us a five-star review on itunes or a positive rating

in the podcast app of your choice raymond for that five stars 300 and some odd episodes into this so uh yeah those review it really helps out uh people finding the show and uh helping us you know stay motivated like we don't listen look at the numbers we said, but it keeps us motivated to keep going. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, Seth, that'll do it for our show this week. Um, had fun again, hashing these events out with you. We've got, um, good show lined up next week. We're working on, uh, getting a guest from ring. So stay tuned for that. I won't stay, say about that, but looking at getting someone on from Ring. So very timely. We had quite a few conversations here about video doorbells.

And be sure to tune in next week if you're interested in a deeper dive into that category. Yep. Sounds good. Well, thanks, everybody, for listening in and those who are listening live and interacting with us in the chat. And Jason, have a great weekend, man. All right. You too. Take care, Seth.